I skimmed the Times story earlier and found it boring. We already know everything that needs knowing about Cindy McCain, I think, maybe. But you miss the point, Mr. Greenwald. That is that civility in our nation is at low ebb and there doesn’t seem to be any way to restore it until citizens rebel.

The Republican right and especially the despicable Karl Rove has lowered the bar into the mud and that is where it’s stuck. John McCain has done nothing, nothing at all to try and raise that bar, in fact, if possible, he stamped it down even lower and continues to do so. I’ve come to the conclusion that Mr. McCain was never the *honorable* man we thought he was. That aside, his wife has to stay in that heated kitchen that Rove & Company built. She makes herself a target by standing up to slime Senator Obama.

I can tell you without reservation that if Mrs. Obama had gone near a stolen prescription drug thirty years ago that the McCain campaign would have built the story into a thirty-second spot and bought TV time all over the nation. It would be a six-part series in the Washington Times and subject to hours of discussion on Fox News. Sarah Palin would be pounding her podium and screaming about it.

So here it is! Cindy McCain must wallow in the sty that her husband has approved and the only hope for a return to civility in our nation is to elect someone strong enough to break the back of the Republican rightwing and move toward some kind of rapprochement with decency. Yes, we can!

In the small town where I live, on an island off the coast of Washington State, we vote by mail from now until election day. We had friends over and all marked our ballots for Obama! Biden! Yeah! Then we marched down to the post office and handed them over. After eight years of W it felt like revenge! It felt real g-o-o-o-o-d!

Naturally we Obama folks can’t assume anything and must soldier on. But, Sarah Palin is the final nail in John McCain’s campaign’s coffin. She has now been proven (in her own state) to be what a lot of us suspected: vindictive, egocentric and dangerous. She is also sorely undereducated, provincial and unequipped to be the vice president of the United States. Unsurprisingly she does appeal to the lowest common denominator in our society: the rabid nincompoops who scream invectives and the racists who read the subtext of her Joe Sixpack messages.

It is too late for McCain to replace her. In fact, it’s too late for McCain. We’ve seen the real man these past weeks and it’s not a pretty picture. The majority of us have had enough. Take nothing for granted, however. George Bush wasn't *elected*.

John McCain has lost his mojo, for sure. He has spent years, years my friends, working toward this election only to find victory ripped away by circumstances; his age, his mental abilities, his health, and now his shallow rhetoric and pandering. His choice of Sarah Palin was fatal. This awful woman appeals to the lowest common denominator in our society: the uneducated, superstitious, cowardly, racist and violent. Apparently, when her handlers let her off her leash and she tore into the crowd of drooling fools that support the GOP ticket, and when McCain took their grunts and screams as some sort of success, he took up the cry. McCain ripped away the last shreds of dignity and honor he had and now is just a fear merchant who deserves to be kicked to the curb.

The country is at a dangerous crossroads. We need leadership. We have to renounce McCain and Palin for what they are. This is not, my friends, Berlin in 1935! Never!

Now we know about Sarah Palin. So much for John McCain’s lip service to country first. He’s either incompetent or opportunistic or both in picking Sarah Palin as a running mate. This awful woman appeals to the lowest common denominator in our society: the uneducated, superstitious, cowardly, racist and violent. She comes across as hateful and vindictive like some evil character in a grade B movie. We thought eight years of Bush/Cheney was the bottom of the barrel. Never say never. I say send her back to Alaska where she can continue to swindle the people who love her so. I don’t want her anywhere around the gears of my government.

Good show! Maybe this article will wake up some of the rightwing advocates of a government so reduced it could be dragged to a bathtub and drowned! The whole so-called conservative bunch who preach less regulation and taxes have now been proven so wrong one would think they’d hang their sorry heads in shame. But, no! McCain, for example, blathers on with no clue what he’s taking about. The last I heard he was still for making retirement investments private and doing away with Social Security.

You cannot have a great nation without taxes, and everyone should pay a fair share. Good government isn’t really taking anything from worker in taxes; it is managing projects too big for individuals or corporations—for example the interstate highway system. People complain about taxes, but they take the roads for granted.

Of course in the United States much is wasted on the Pentagon, pork barrel projects, and graft, corruption and war! We can thank eight years of Bush/Cheney for a lot of it. What we don’t need is four more years of it!